Portret van een onbekende vrouw 1879 - 1900

This is Friedrich Julius von Kolkow's photograph of an unknown woman. The most striking motif is the pendant hanging around her neck. Consider the amulet: it goes back through centuries. Amulets, once worn as protection against evil spirits in ancient cultures, evolved into personal emblems. We see the echo of this in medieval reliquaries, carried as tokens of faith. Note its presence here, transformed into an element of personal adornment. It begs the question: what subconscious desires drove its evolution? Is it simply fashion, or does it reach into our collective memory, seeking the comfort of ancient protective talismans? The woman's gaze meets ours, and we see the subtle power of an image to connect across time, echoing through generations. The cyclical progression of symbols is ever present.